Tag Archives: Market research

Customer surveys can offer valuable insight to any business owner. Whether you are launching a new product or considering axing an old service, a customer survey can help you decide which decision is in the best interest of your consumers. But how do you get your customers to take those pesky surveys that you, yourself, normally pass up or forget about? Luckily, this article has compile a few tips to help you create a survey that your customers won’t only fill out, but will take seriously, as well.

When To Ask

When customers review a business, they either do so because they received above and beyond service or they had a horrible experience. But if neither extreme has happened, most customers pass up the opportunity to divulge their two cents. This is because many customers don’t see the need to contribute to a survey. They’ve had a pretty good experience shopping in your store or doing business with your company, and since they’re satisfied, there’s no point in filling out a survey to help others. It’s simple really; most customers very surveys as an inconvenience.

However, there is a way to turn all that around. As a business owner, you can understand that time is valuable. If you were to spend five minute filling out a survey for someone else’s benefit, you’d want something in return. So give your customers the same inventive to fill out your surveys. Offer a discount on their next purchase, a chance to win a prize, or a freebie for every survey they fill out. Making the surveys worthwhile will help ensure more people fill it out.

Furthermore, surveys should be asked when there’s something worth asking. It would be great to know how your business is doing on a day-to-day basis, but again, customers will get bored with filling out a survey every time they shop. Instead, create surveys before you release a new product or service, to get a feel for how a new shopping experience is working out, and so on. This sort of timing lets customers feel like they’re included on your business’ future decisions…which they are! They’ll take a personal interest in helping your business succeed.

How To Ask

Surveys can be a very tricky thing to do correctly. Even if you have interested customers, asking too many questions, or even just a few of the wrong questions can be very off-putting. Your survey should be a breeze to take, not a burden. Therefore, form questions that are simple to read and simple to answer. For example, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did you like our new frozen yogurt flavor?” is a simple question because it gets right to the point. Furthermore, you’re essentially offering the answer by laying out options for the customer. There is little work for the customer to do except for the try the yogurt and give it a number.

You should also allow your surveys to be as easygoing as possible. This means allowing customers to skip questions, save questions for later, and return to the survey at a later time. Otherwise, you’ll end up forcing your customers into a corner they don’t want to be in. Try offering an incentive so customers are more willing to come back later and finish the survey.

Another way to make surveys easier on your customers is to give them a meter of how close they are to being done. Remember, your customers’ time is just as valuable as yours. Letting them know they only have five questions left can be motivating when they feel like they’re on the clock.

After The Survey

Once you’ve given your survey enough time to make its rounds, you should start to have a pretty pile of information that can help your company move forward. Your customers have just shared their likes and dislikes, preferences, ideas, and recommendations. It will take you time to filter through all the answers, but eventually you’ll come up with a solution that is by your customers, for your customers.

Furthermore, allow your customers to opt-in for future surveys or follow-up questions. If someone has a great idea or you’ve found out that someone had a horrible experience, you can correct that mistake and prevent future ones from happening right then and there.

Any business owner would be lucky to know the private thoughts of just one of their customers. With surveys, you can have insight into hundreds or thousands of customers that are not only interested and willing to fill out your survey, but happy to share what would make them a loyal customer. With a well-constructed survey, you can be helping your business and helping your consumers at the same time.

Pete Wise is a copywriter working for Luminar Insights, the premiere source of latino analytics and insights on the web. If you are looking for a reliable source of hispanic data to take your marketing campaign to the next level, go to their website to learn more.

Getting a small business up and running is never easy. You have plenty to consider already, between providing a supportive work environment for staff, providing group health benefits for family members and employees, keeping your company running on a day to day basis and representing yourself positively in the community. With all these factors at work, it can be difficult to overlook marketing yourself to the correct potential buyers, but with a comprehensive marketing strategy you’ll find the dedication pays out in spades.

Conducting market research is an imperative part to becoming a successful marketer in your industry. Without this research, it can be challenging to know just who to market yourself to. By conducting research, either by yourself or through a hired market research firm, you will find out just who your potential buyers or investors may be, and how you can appeal to them specifically. This will help you draft a useful marketing strategy which targets the proper avenues to appeal to your customers.

Many companies are just coming to realize the massive benefits from sponsorship that can set their company apart from the rest. The trick to sponsorship is to ensure you’re sponsoring events and conferences which appeal directly to your potential clients. Don’t overlook those cold pitch emails right away, as some events offer a unique opportunity to provide advertisement for your business at a very low product cost. Handing out product in this way can be an excellent way to allow people to sample what you can offer at a low risk, and just may create some raving fans.

Be Present in the Community

Whether you decide to advertise on bus stops, radio or television channels, in the newspaper or in digital media, it should be your marketing objective to be on the tip of your community’s tongue. The intention of any marketer is to be the first business that comes to mind when people think of your field, and the best way to achieve this is through consistent and thorough community involvement and presence. Donate to local hospitals, get involved in local summer camps, sports teams, or partner with other companies to put on a family day in your area. Clients and customers will remember your name when it is attached to good deeds, especially if your business offers local families’ opportunities to grow that they may not have otherwise been afforded.

Whether your business is large, medium or small, the best way for you to draw in and keep customers is to create a business brand. Great business branding can make all the difference when it comes to repeat customers and as such, you will need it to be memorable. Catchy slogans, attractive logos and clear objectives all contribute towards securing an image that the general public will love. When it comes to creating your brand, you are advised to hire or outsource a team of professionals, including a logodesigner.

Where to begin with business branding.
Before you get started with business branding, you need to understand your market and the needs of those that you are serving. The image that you create is not so much about what you want; it is one that makes people believe that your business is the only solution for their needs. That said it is important to do continuous market research as part of your marketing plan. Before you begin forming a brand, get in to the hearts and minds of your potential customers and clients. Look at statistics, surveys and trends that can give you a clear insight in to what will win them over.

You must then begin looking at the nature of your products and services. Think about what you want to offer, the level of quality you can provide, your ethos, what you specialize in and the mission of your company. All of these things will define the way that you brand your business.

Creating a brand that promotes the image of your business.
There are many different ways to define business branding. The AMA (American Marketing Association) classifies business branding as being anything that includes a name, symbol, slogan, logo or design. A growing body of evidence now suggests that clients and customers will form their initial-and often their final- judgement’s of your business when they see your logo or design. Bearing that in mind, it makes sense to focus firstly on that initial image you put across.

A good logo designer will be able to form a logo that reflects your business and attracts your target audience. Designing a logo may seem like a simple process, but a lot of psychology and research goes in to producing the image that will impact those looking to do business with you. For example, certain colors will subliminally project an image to the market that you are targeting. Colors such as blue are synonymous with companies that wish to promote a calm and trustworthy image. Colors such as red are associated with passionate images. Naturally, it makes sense for a company promoting maternity services to feature blue in their logo and a lingerie designer to feature red in theirs, not the other way round. Such small details can make all the difference when it comes to forming your brand.

Placing great emphasis on your logo and design
Although there are many other factors that will influence the popularity and success of your business branding, your logo is going to be what gives your customer base their first impression of your company. By hiring a logo designer that is prepared, and qualified, to invest the time that is needed to design your logo, you will form an image that truly reflects your company. It should always be the case that your pamphlets, advertisements and website reflect your logo fully.

When it comes to forming a great business brand, investing a lot of time in forming your logo and design is essential. Take some time to further build your company’s image around the design that you first form and make sure it represents its ethos. Always remember, that as your target audience changes, so should your branding, but a great logo will always stay the same.

Stephanie Wagner is a freelance writer writing on topics related to business and marketing. Although she is not associated with Logo Mojo, she does recommend them to any business looking for a great logo designer.

In order for your company to be successful, you must create a need in your consumer. Products and services that solve a problem or give pleasure to buyers are the most likely to be successful. Coming up with an idea for a business requires you to do some research. Look around you, what are some problems that everybody faces? If you can take a problem that everybody has and solve it (cheaply), then you have a powerful business idea.

Know the audience

When coming up with an idea, it is important to think about who might be buying your product or service. For example, if you wish to sell candy on the street, you’re should probably do market research to find out what streets will get you the most profit. Selling candy on the street of a bunch of retired couples may not be as wise as selling candy in front of an elementary school. Knowing your audience and what they are willing to pay for and under what conditions they’ll pay for it is vital to being successful.

Network

Surround yourself by smart people. It is an unfortunate truth that what you know often doesn’t matter as much as who you know. It helps to find people who are masters of their art—whether that art be technological know-how, people skills, or simply marketing skills. Having a good and diverse skill set is necessary in any new company.

Market

Knowing how to market your product is key. Part of marketing goes straight back to knowing your audience. You have to be familiar with the self-interests, needs, and wants of your target audience if you wish to make any impact at all. It is also necessary to know where your audiences tune into and who they trust for information. You don’t see many candy commercials during news segments. Why? Because adults aren’t the target audience for candy. Your kids are.

Do your research

When you are selling your product or service, make sure you do your research. Try to find out not only how much people are buying, but why they are buying it. Or, if things aren’t going well, find out why they’re not buying it. It may be a simple matter of changing the packaging. It may be because your consumers don’t understand the product or service. Whatever the reason is, find it out. Don’t be afraid to change your tactics if something isn’t working.

Online research panels are one of the key methods used in any online market research. They allow careful targeting of surveys and offer detailed responses from participants in a real time environment. If you are considering online market research then it is worth examining the benefits of online research panels as they are a potentially invaluable resource for information.

If you are planning on selling anything then knowing your target audience, their needs and their opinions is vital to proper strategic planning. Online research panels offer a number of advantages in this process and provide research that has a number of benefits. Firstly it is quick which means it does not have to delay your deployment or implementation of strategies. Secondly online panels are very easy to set up and online require very little in terms of manpower and resources to implement. Despite this they still manage to attain a high quality of results and data to be analysed making them have considerable bang for buck. The cost effectiveness is one of the key advantages to online research panels which have few overheads thanks to being based solely online. Gone are the days where you needed survey staff and designated locations within your targeted demographics local area. Online research panels can deliver real time results which means you can move on the information attained incredibly quickly, this can be incredibly useful in all aspects of strategic planning. Finally online research panels offer fixed prices for a fixed sample as you can guarantee the number of respondents within a set time frame.

Targeting your research panel is essential to finding the correct respondents and demographics. If you want to conduct a survey across a wide spread of demographics in varying locations then online research panels offer you the easiest opportunity for collecting a spread of information. As an initial starting point you need to define your research aims and needs. The simplest way of doing so is to work out the hypotheses you wish to test and the data you need to make a marketing decision. The hypotheses in question should be the most pressing issued facing your company of project. For example your initial hypothesis might be – our product will appeal to lower middle class workers in urban areas, or, our service targets businesses concerned with providing technical services internationally. If you are conducting broader research you may instead have a series of key questions that need to be addressed such as – who are our key demographics, which particular groups does our product appeal to and what is the best way to market it to them. Either way this initial starting point determines the sample you will need from your online research panel and the type of research you wish to conduct. Secondly you need to determine the data you need. Firstly are you looking for qualitative or quantitative data? If you are looking for mainly quantitative data then you need to shape your questions carefully to give you useful and implementable data. If you are looking for qualitative data then you need to make sure that your questions facilitate objective responses and that you don’t lean your research in any particular direction. Understanding these fundamentals ensures that you receive objective data and that your research provides you the most reliable data possible without the worry of acting on incorrect and inefficient data.

Providing you follow the aforementioned planning strategy online research panels are an essential part of any market research campaign. Thanks to their cost effectiveness and ease of application they serve efficiently at either laying the groundwork for further research or as a complete research project in its own right.

Chris writes about market research companies such as Research Now, whilst covering various issues concerned with online surveys or other data collection services for your business projects.

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